Yes! United Stepping Up Its Twitter Participation – Keep It Up!

I’ve previously harped on United Airlines for its less-than active, engaging participation on Twitter. But I’ve seen significant improvement lately, particularly since the beginning of the year.

United has stepped up its game in replying, helping and informing those who directly include @united in their tweets. And it’s a welcome sign.

Today, for the first time I’ve seen, United interjected a bit of humor and playfulness in a tweet. It was an ideal response to someone I follow, who if he doesn’t mind, I can call an #avgeek.

Jason Rabinowitz (aka @AirlineFlyer on Twitter) was at the Virgin America event in Newark today celebrating their new service and happened to tweet the following humorous observation, including an image. And United was quick to reply in kind.

While an airline’s target market is the high-yield business traveler, they need to be mindful of all of their customers and followers. And it was a pleasure to see United step back from a rigid corporate persona to engage someone in playful banter today. Well done, United.

Plus, I’ve seen United very quickly help passengers who need immediate assistance with flight protection in the event of a yet-to-be-realized airport “misconnect”, help with searching for fares and flights, and assistance offering post-trip issue resolution.

Mistakes still happen, such as oopsing on airport codes:

But heck, I make mistakes, too. I’m just happy to see United really following through on something they’ve known needed improvement.

My favorite airline in the Twitterverse remains American Airlines as they consistently engage and inform their followers in a fashion as United did today. Social media isn’t going away and Twitter has certainly exploded in both acceptance and participation as a medium to interact with a company’s customers. I’m glad to see United is finally taking it seriously (and humorously).

That guy in the second exchange looks familiar.
Hopefully I didn’t sound like a jerk in that exchange, but I didn’t know how else to put it.
They have been immensely helpful a few times when I couldn’t get CS agents in person to get stuff done, but I do agree that there are some things where they don’t have enough power to make things happen.

@Ryan: Twitter is a difficult medium to handle everything, but I hope they steered you in the right direction.
@Kris: Naw, you definitely didn’t come across as a jerk to me. Rather helpful, actually. I just wanted to include something I saw to show no one is perfect (including me) and to help frame the picture a bit as I’m sure there are still those out there who don’t feel the same way as I do re: United’s improvement on Twitter.